Marcel Duchamp

The Marcel Duchamp Retrospective Exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museumin1963capt’uredthe flow of Duchamp s works and ideas from his early oil canvas paintings to his famous ready-mades.Th’eWeingrowCollection s edition of the catalogue’includestheexhibition s witty publicity poster, designed by the artist and playfully entitled A Poster within a Poster .

Marcel Duchamp s early ’ works were mostly oil-on-canvas paintings. As exemplified by Portrait of the Artist’s Father , in the early 1900s he painted portraits of his family and friends, with influences from post-impressionism and fauvism. 1

CHESS FIXATION

Fig. 3. Marcel Duchamp, Portrait of Chess Players , 1911

Around 1923, Duchamp shifted his focus from making art to playing chess. Even before this move, however, the theme of chess was prevalent in many of his major art pieces. One example is Portrait of Chess Players (1911), in which the profiles of two players interlock with chess pieces that are randomly placed throughout the work. Duchamp, who devoted the majority of his time to playing chess, once said, I “ have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. 2

CUBIST-INSPIRED WORKS

Fig. 4. Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1911

In 1912, Duchamp painted the controversial Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 , which expressed motion through the use of successive superimposed images. This piece was one of Duchamp s final oil-on-’ canvas paintings. By portraying movement through overlapping cubist-inspired figures, he began to show his passion for the analytical and scientific aspects of art.

MECHANOMORPHOLOGY

Fig. 5. Marcel Duchamp,

The Passage from the Virgin to Bride, 1912

MECHANOMORPHOLOGY

Bride is the last of a series that represents a woman in her passage from virgin to bride. Also based again on cubismandmorphology,th’iswork exemplifies Duchamp s focus on the theme of transformation, both in individual pieces and throughout a continuing series of artworks.

Duchamp worked on The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass ) from 1915 to 1923. He carefully executed the work on two panes of glass, using materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. In a later description, he noted that this work is intended to depict the encounter between the “Bride, in the upper panel, and her nine “Bachelors, gathered below in an abundance of mechanical devices. Duchamp said that this work was left in a “state of incompletion; after an exhibition in 1926, it was accidentally shattered. 4

Duchamp introduced the concept of ready-mades like those seen here: common objects, sometimes modified or “assisted and presented as works of art. Recent scholarship characterizes these various works as custom-made objects that Duchamp created to explore the boundaries of perception and cognition. 5

Bicycle Wheel (1913) incorporated movement in a literal way: viewers could ether spinthewheel’.Tog with Duchamp s other “found objects this piece helped to transform conventional ideas of what constitutes an art object.

DUCHAMP’SREAD-YMADES

Fountain (’1917),perhapsDuchamp s most recognizable work (despite the fact that he used the pseudonym “R. Mutt for it) was refused entry in the Societ e dent ’yofIndpen Artists s first exhibition. Ironically,Duc’hampwasoneof the Society s founding membersand the exhibition had been publicized as being “open to all.